Workforce Language Services

While immigrants with limited English skills are increasingly able to access medical care in their native language, this trend has not carried over into the pharmacies where they fill their prescriptions.  A Gotham Gazette article about this issue quotes a report by the New York Academy of Medicine in which they found that two thirds of pharmacies in the NYC area do not provide translations of prescription instructions despite the fact that 88 percent of city pharmacies serve limited English speakers. 

Obviously this could prove disastrous or even fatal for limited English speakers who either take their medicine incorrectly or don’t take it out of fear that they’ve misunderstood the directions.  Health care advocates working with city council members are currently working on legislation that would require translation services:

“Giving New Yorkers access to the information they need starts with simple, common sense steps, like providing translation services and extra medical instruction for those with limited English proficiency who are filling prescriptions,” said Gotbaum in a prepared statement. “Our proposed legislation will help break down the barriers many currently face when seeking health care and ensure that no New Yorker is left guessing when it comes to questions about their medication.”

Concerns from the pharmacies about implementing such legislation include worries about lack of pharmacists in general, much less multilingual ones, the dangers of providing incorrect translations, and the inability to serve all customers in neighborhoods with more than one dominant language. 

A 2006 article from the New York Times detailed the findings of researchers who surveyed the practices of pharmacies in the Bronx.  While their research was limited to that particular borough,  those conducting the study suggested that this problem is most likely not limited to this corner of the country, a suggestion that is further backed up by the more recent article. 

As workplaces become more lingustically diverse, companies are trying to negotiate the balance between making sure all employees can communicate enough to do their jobs and respecting the fact that many employees represent linguistic minorities.  A recent Boston Globe article explores this balancing act, and uses the Tufts Medical Center’s English language learning program as an example.

Nora Moynihan Blake, who directs the housekeeping staff at the Medical Center, found that her staff often couldn’t communicate amongst themselves (within the staff, there are thirty separate languages spoken) nor with patients and visitors.  This has led to misunderstandings, and the staff’s lack of English language competency has stalled their upward mobility.  Blake was the catalyst for onsite English and GED classes.

The Tufts program is unusual. While 80 percent of companies employ workers whose deficiencies in English limit their ability to perform their jobs, only about a third provide remedial language training, and then mostly if a worker asks for help, according to a 2007 Conference Board survey of 70 senior corporate directors of training. “For a lot of companies, it’s a reactive rather than a proactive approach,” says researcher Chris Woock.

The article also raises the question of whether it’s insensitive for those with native languages other than English to communicate in them in front of English speakers at work.  To read more commentary on this question, click here.

 Washington state has begun a traffic safety and education outreach program called El Protector in an attempt to slow fatal car colllisions.  The data showed that the majority of those involved in fatal collisions in the past years were Hispanic, many of whom did not speak English. 

The workshops, given by bilingual officers have three main purposes:

• to educate Spanish speakers on traffic laws and safe driving;
• to inform them of what documents they must provide when being pulled over;
• and to increase Hispanic’s comfort level with law enforcement.

Trooper Oscar Garcia is extremely positive about this program and its results:

“This program’s very beneficial to them because they have an opportunity to really ask questions from someone they can communicate with,” Garcia said. “It opens doors to have a better rapport with other officers. A lot of times the conflict they run into is because of the language barrier, but I tell them it all comes down to safety.”

Last year, 121 traffic safety presentations were made in the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla County and Yakima Valley through the El Protector program.

The program is supported through partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, traffic safety task forces, a citizen advisory board and community groups.

El Protector is only offered in the Mid-Columbia, but the program’s success has received statewide attention and officials are working to try to expand it to other areas.

Click here for the full article about El Protector.

Health care is a good example of a field in which its practitioners are not only aware of the diversity of those who use their services but also of the need to be culturally competent when providing services, as discussed in this recent post.

In a recent talk in Connecticity, Sheila Thorne urged health care providers to realize that when working with patients from different cultures, they not only have to be aware of the language barrier but also of the mindset that these groups bring with them. 

Thorne shared an anecdote with the audience as well as its attendant lesson:

One physician that Thorne knows had a Latino patient who kept returning, complaining about an ear infection that wouldn’t go away. The patient remarked that it must be God’s will that she suffer with it, Thorne said. “And the physician responded, then it must be God’s will that keeps bringing you back to me to do something about it. The important thing that all health-care providers have to keep in mind is avoid poo-pooing the attitudes and beliefs these patients come to them with.”

Thorne was followed by a number of health-care advocates who suggested that the medical establishment needs to engage in a dialogue with minority patients, to question them about what they believe is at the root of whatever ails them, what their treatment goals are and whether there are outside social and economic dynamics that affect their health.

The article mentions that six states currently require their medical schools to provide a cultural competence curriculum to their graduates, and Thorne expects that more states will add this requirement as they realize that culturally competent practitioners provide better service and possibly lower long-term treatment costs.

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Several Seminole County school cafeteria workers have been told speaking Spanish made their workplace more dangerous. The workers were re-assigned following complaints that they used their native language on the job.Seminole County school district’s risk manager said it has an English-only policy in the kitchens because a lot of workers are suffering kitchen burns. If someone yells “cuidado,” which means “be careful” in Spanish, others might not understand.

Rather than educate and engage school cafeteria workers, this county’s school district chose to simply re-assign the Spanish-speaking offenders.  By taking a hard-line approach to safety in the cafeteria, the district certainly missed an opportunity for education and increased communication across cultures. 

If safety was such a deep concern, how hard would it have been for the employer to give a brief lesson on safety warnings in English and Spanish so that both groups could learn from the incident?  But the school district’s reassignment of the Spanish-speaking staff speaks more to its lack of cultural sensitivity than to its desire to create a safe working environment. 

To read the brief article, click here.

There has never been a shortage of articles about diversity in the workplace to be posted in this blog.  But I wonder how many companies simply try to recruit more minorities or put those from underrepresented demographics in more visible positions and call it a day. 

An article by Rodney Brown points out that organizational cultural competency goes much deeper than diversity initiatives which may look good on the surface, but do not create any real change in how people interact and understand each other. 

Traditional diversity misses the mark. Even when an organization has achieved “diversity” as measured by racial, gender or other dimensions, lack of cultural competency can produce a host of problems, such as inter-personal conflicts, high staff turnover, substandard customer service and even lawsuits. In health care delivery, cultural breakdowns in staff-to-staff and staff-to-patient communication has even proved fatal.

By providing cultural competency training, employers take the critical step from having the appearances of a diverse employee base to having employees become more competent in working together. 

Brown posits that all of the benefits touted by diversity advocates (higher staff morale, increased productivity, employee buy-in) may ultimately backfire if diversity strategies are not buttressed by cultural competency education.

To read more about the differences between diversity and cultural competency, click here.

BusinessWeek.com’s small business blog offers daily practical advice on running a business.  April 3rd’s advice provides a starting point on how to think about implementing diversity policies, and ends with this sound thought:

Remember, people from different backgrounds bring their life lessons, culture, and opinions to work. Often, their ability to connect with clients and customers of similar backgrounds is incomparable. The more you embrace and encourage diversity, the more your company will benefit.

The key point is that both employer and employee benefit when a company embraces the different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives of its employees.  Further evidence of this comes from an article about Canada’s top 25 best diversity employers from the online version of Ottawa Citizen.  An excerpt from this article brings some of the benefits of company-wide diversity policies to the forefront:

Mediacorp’s first report on the Best Diversity Employers shows companies are making big gains on the diversity front with equal gains in financial health and long-term sustainability.

“The larger picture is that it’s simply good for business in terms of recruitment to be reflective of your community and sensitive to the needs of specific communities,” says Richard Yerema, editor of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for Mediacorp.

Research has demonstrated repeatedly that diversity in the workplace improves innovation, productivity and morale, reduces turnover and ultimately benefits the bottom line. Several research studies have reached the same conclusion, and Canadians seem to agree.

The formula seems simple and intuitive: happy, respected employees are more loyal and provide better service to their employer which ultimately makes the employer more profitable.  While it seems straightforward, most companies need assistance from outside consultants to make this happen and company-wide cultural competency training  is a step toward ultimately making businesses sustainable. 

NYTimes.com will bring to its online readers a new section devoted to businesses and companies with an emphasis on fostering workplace diversity. 

From the April 2, 2008 press release:

“This section is a great resource for minority job candidates seeking to connect with companies that want to diversify their workforce,” said Patricia Sierra Sampson, advertising director, Diversity and Inclusion, The New York Times. “Employers and advertisers are becoming more aware that in order to thrive in today’s global marketplace, recruiting and retaining men and women of diverse backgrounds is essential for continued success.”

Click here to read details about what this new section will include.

One of my pet peeves is hearing people (even Spanish-speakers themselves) refer to the Latino community as Spanish.  As in “Only Spanish people work there,” or “That store sells Spanish food.”  I’m not sure if this phenomenon is unique to the Northeast, whose cities are populated with recent Mexican-immigrants, second generation Dominicans, Puerto Ricans who move between their island and this part of the country, and dozens more nationalities.  But lumping all Spanish-speakers together under the false umbrella of “Spanish” negates the true diversity of people from very different cultures united by a common language.

Poynter Online, an online publication providing information for journalists about their profession, delves into this issue through a discussion about whether to use the term Hispanic or Latino.

Roberto Suro, a professor at the University of Southern California and former director of the Pew Hispanic Center, suggests that we look at the Latino population as diverse, dispersed, and growing and changing all the time. 

The article ends with this thought:

It’s often our habit to lump “Hispanics” in one group when reporting about health, politics, or any other subject. Our sources often do the same thing. Suro’s data forces us to think twice and ask a few more questions. As he emphasized last week, “it’s dangerous to generalize.”

This advice would also serve us well when talking about workplace diversity and should warn us against assuming that all Spanish-speakers act and respond in similar ways.  A company’s sound cultural competency policy will take into account that Latinos will not have a uniform set of perspectives and way of working just because this group shares a common language. 

To read more, click here.  Especially of interest are the statistics that suggest a multiplicty of perspectives delineated by generation. 

I often come across articles online about police departments across the country encouraging their officers to learn Spanish to better connect with the Hispanic community.  Many times the article will also mentioned that the department has a community liaison working for the police to assist in police-resident communication.

But this particular article showed how the Newport News police are truly attempting to break through cultural barriers that often prevent Spanish-speaking immigrants from talking to the police.  Described in the article were a couple of tactics that the police used to open lines of communication, missteps and all.

Included at the end of the piece was one of their successes after patiently making themselves known as approachable in the community:

Wellington Apartments resident Carlos Rivera said in Spanish that he felt a little doubtful when the police first started showing up. But the native of Honduras said he felt confident approaching the trailer Saturday. He asked about the best way to contact them if he was having problems and what to do if he saw a crime being committed.

This particular police department’s experience shows that, to truly form a connection, sensitivity to cultural practices and perspectives is just as important as simply speaking the language of the community.